Titles related to environmental law can be identified using the table of contents of federal and state codes. However, a subject index is the most efficient method to find individual water laws in federal and state codes, as it allows you to use subject keywords to find specific code sections. Subject indexes are available in print codes and in legal databases. In addition, if you need to find all code sections resulting from a specific enacted law, use a popular name table. This type of table identifies specific code sections that were created or amended by specific sections of an enacted law. Federal popular name tables are available on Westlaw, Lexis, and the Office of Law Revision Counsel's website. Below is an example of the table from the Office of Law Revision Counsel for the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996.
State codes also utilize popular name tables. In Westlaw, a state's popular name table is located in the related "Tools & Resources" materials on each state's code page. Lexis does not provide popular name tables for state codes. For publication sources of state statutes, see our individual state research guides.
For an introduction to statutory research, see our Statutes Research Guide guide. The following is a list of sources for the full text of federal laws:
ProQuest Legislative Insight is the Library's primary resource for compiled legislative histories. This databases allows for keyword searching through the full-text documents of an entire compiled legislative history. You can search by public law or statutes at large citation or by popular name.
In addition, there are compiled legislative histories available in HeinOnline:
A complete collection of federal legislative documents dating back to the first Congress can be found in ProQuest Congressional.
A listing of freely available federal legislative materials collections can be found under Free Sources of Legislative History on our Free and Low Cost Legal Research Guide.
Fifty-state surveys track a single topic across the statutes (& sometimes regulations) of all 50 states. They usually take the form of a state-by-state table or chart containing the citations to the laws on the given topic in each state, but generally contain little or no analysis. A 50-State Survey will not be available for every/all topics, but, if there is one, it can serve as a valuable starting point when conducting multi-jurisdictional research on a topic.
Check each of the below sources to see if there is a 50-state-survey already compiled for your topic. Be sure also to identify when a compiled survey was completed and always update the information.
Web: Note that you can sometimes find multi-state surveys or multi-state issue-trackers online, such as on the websites of centers, professional associations, non-governmental organizations and private firms that focus on particular areas of the law, e.g., Plaintiff's Medical Care and Treatment—Discovery and Evidentiary Issues by the American Bar Association; Legal Innovation Regulatory Survey (2020) by the American Bar Association; 50-State Surveys by Butler Snow LLP; 50-State Surveys / Charts by the American Financial Services Association, etc. In general, to locate compiled reports by non-profit groups using Google, try searching for: site:.org "state survey" [keyword(s)].
Texts & Treatises: Nationally-scoped treatises on a topic often include state-by-state treatments that will include citations to equivalent laws in each state (e.g. they may have sections or chapters on each state, state-by-state comparison tables, or information in their appendices that describe or reference the laws in each state). Our topically-organized Treatise Finders, while not comprehensive, are a great place to begin. Beyond this, check both Lexis and Westlaw's collections for relevant national treatises, as each platform has unique titles not available in the other. Books and reports on a topic across multiple jurisdictions may also be available in our library's print or digital collection; to search for these, perform a search in the Library Catalog using the term "fifty-state," "state-by-state" or "50-state."
ALRs: American Law Reports (ALRs) track a single, narrow legal issue across all U.S. jurisdictions. While there is not one on every topic, when there is one on-point you will find that they include both substantive analysis and useful research tools (such as a Table of Laws with primary authorities from every relevant jurisdiction as well as cross-references to other secondary sources and research tools). ALRs are available on both Westlaw and Lexis.
Journals: Occasionally, a multi-jurisdictional survey may be published in law reviews. In most instances, the title of the article will contain the phrase "50 state survey" or "state survey." For more on finding articles using article indices and full-text databases, consult our Articles Research Guide. Multi-state legislative reports might also be published on SSRN, which is freely available online.
These relatively recent tools to the legal research market allow you to construct custom state law comparisons; however, so far, their usefulness can can be limited (e.g. to select pre-populated topics), and they may not be comprehensive. It is usually best to supplement them with your own research in order to address possible gaps.